Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of "great" apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We've managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time."

I see your confusion. I made no claim that every application area has a better Linux application.

I only claimed that there were some desktop application areas where the best aplication was a Linux application. For example, the desktop itself ... the best-of-breed desktop available right now is arguably the KDE Plasma desktop.

A lot of people are trying to claim that there are no desktop applications for which the best application is available for Linux only. So I have suggested a number for which it can be said that the best available application is available for Linux only. One of my examples was the KDE Plasma desktop itself. Another of my examples is digikam. Another is the file manager Dolphin.

Now, to debate my claim, you need to show a better desktop. Or a better photo collection manager. Or a better (default) file manager.

Premiere Elements is a video editor. I have made no claim about video editors.

Anyway, Linux does a good job with the basic 'bread and butter apps', in that I don't think I'd be embarrased to use any app on your list, except maybe Dolphin. However, I wouldn't say any of the ones on your list I'm familiar with are clearly superior to their Windows counterparts. And when you get into high-end/specialty sort of desktop apps (such as software synths), Linux is going to lose almost every time.

KDE runs on BSD and I believe there is also a build you can install on Windows. Not sure if there is an osX native release.

Dolphin is nice but I'd like to see it's plugins crash the entire Dolphin out less often. I can't tell you how many times I've had three or four seporate Dolphin windows open, grabbed a video file and watched them all disapear after a momentary lockup. I'd also like to see it handle Samba much better though it'll never manage it as well as Iexplore.exe.

Digikam I haven't worked with.

Amarok is a very nice media player but in mhy opinion, they made a mess of the UI with the last version change. I upgraded to Debian Squeeze which ships with the newer version and now things that where dead simply like drag/drop mp3s into the play list, updating metadata and having them sorted/renamed into my library standard structure have been redisined to be a pig. Seriously? I actually had to create an "tobeadded" directory and map it into the managed directories list.. WTF? (though, it remains head and sholders above the Apple circle-jerk that is Itunes).

For me it really shines in the terminal space still though, Metasploit on Windows is just not remotely the same as working with Metasploit on top of the *nix cli userland. Granted, for that type of work Normally have my host OS, a Backtrack VM and a Windows VM all working out of the same mapped directory so I have the os/tool needed when needed without splitting my working dir and data across multiple systems.

Don't get me wrong, while I think "only 10 good apps" is a bunk claim, there is a pretty solid point in the fragmentation of the market and APIs in terms of software that the distributions don't take the time to package for there own distro build. Having a .DEB extension doesn't mean it can be dropped onto any .deb packaged based distro.